A BUCKINGHAM shopkeeper rang the Advertiser in excitement after a ghostly face appeared in her shop counter.
Natalie Afriat, of Winstons jewellers, on Market Hill, called the paper after staff spotted the apparition, apparently of a young woman of Eastern appearance.
Mrs Afriat said: “We had some customers in this morning, then after they went I said: ‘Oh my God, girls, have you seen this?’”
She said normally a handprint on the black wood counter would disappear after someone took their hand away, but this image had been there for at least an hour when Advertiser photographer Jake McNulty snapped it.
The shop is in a 300-year-old listed building on Market Hill.
Mrs Afriat said: “All the others in the row burned down and this was the only one left standing.”
She said she had no idea who the ghostly likeness might be of, but added: “I don’t feel she’s bad. We don’t want to polish her out.”

Police in Peterborough have been called on to act as ghost busters by victims who feel they may have been targeted by thieves and yobs from beyond the grave.

Findings released by Cambridgeshire Police following a Freedom of Information request by The Evening Telegraph, show Peterborough police have been alerted on six occasions in the last three years to deal with ghostly apparitions.

And in an eerie twist, three of these sightings occurred on the same date – 9th September – in consecutive years.

Two sightings also happened on the same day – 21st February this year – in central Peterborough.

Police said that all reports featuring the word ‘ghost’ in the last three years had occurred within the county’s Northern Division which covers the whole of Peterborough.

The full list of ghostly sightings reported to police includes:

- On 9 September 2009: police were called to a report of a burglary in the PE1 post code area.

The caller told officers it was believed there was a ghost in their house but no trace was ever found.

- On 21 November 2009: a disturbance in a field adjoining a house in Thorney was reported.

Officers were told by locals that this may have been caused by the ghost of a child.

- On 9 September 2010: police were called to a home in Stanground one week after an attempted burglary.

Officers reported that a child had woken at night and believed that a ghost was trying to enter through a window.

- On 21 February 2011: officers stopped a “confused woman” in Peterborough city centre.

They noted that she appeared to be “talking to ghosts”.

- On the same date in the PE1 area, police received a call from a person who claimed to be hearing “ghost noises” as well as seeing hands coming over the top of a door.

The caller also reported a group of three males outside the property, one of whom was a white male.

- On 9 September 2011: a driver on the A47 in central Peterborough reported a person walking down a slip road onto the carriageway against the flow of traffic.

The driver was described to be in such a state of shock that it felt like they “had seen a ghost”.

In all cases police say that no further action was taken by officers.

A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire Police said: “Reports like these are extremely rare but where people have genuine concerns they or their property is at risk we will investigate if appropriate.”

Peterborough Museum

However, the sightings have come as little surprise to Stuart Orme, who works at the supposedly-haunted Peterborough Museum and organises popular ghost walks through the city centre.

Mr Orme said: “Peterborough is an ancient city with a lot of history and tales get built up over time.

“We have an historic cathedral and other old buildings with links to hundreds of people from the past.

“There have been lots of ghost stories in the city over the years and we go through these on our walks.

“I would say that around 80 per cent of ghost stories can be explained with a rational answer.

“But it’s the remaining 20 per cent that no matter how hard you try to think of one, no logical answer exists.”

Among the places which are said to be haunted are the Queensgate Shopping Centre and the city’s museum.

The museum is said to be stalked by the ghost of a First World War Australian Soldier Sergeant Thomas Hunter, who was taken there in 1916 after being wounded.

Back then the museum was a hospital and Sergeant Hunter died there.

Since then staff have regularly reported furniture being mysteriously moved about.

Peterborough Cathedral is also said to be haunted by three ghosts.

The apparition of a little girl who was apparently murdered there in the 1860s is said to have appeared in a window in one of the building’s precincts.

The ghosts of a monk and a stone mason who also supposedly died there have been spotted as well.

The city’s Cowgate area is believed to be haunted following an incident of body snatching back in the 1820s.

Mr Orme added: “Although the museum is currently closed to the public we still have staff working here and some of those have heard mysterious footsteps when nobody else was around.

“There have been several ghost sightings at the Queensgate Shopping Centre over the past 30 years.

“The centre is built on an old residential area which used to contain shops and homes so people say the ghosts could be former residents there.”

So why are people so fascinated by ghost sightings and what should they do if they experience one?

Mr Orme said: “Ghost sightings capture people’s imaginations because they are linked to our fascination about what happens after death.

“I have met people who claim to have seen ghosts and some of them are the most down-to-earth rational men and women you could ever meet.

“But when they start telling you about the ghost they saw their belief is completely rigid and no amount of reasoning can change their minds.

“At the end of the day people are suckers for a good ghost story – even those who don’t believe in ghosts – and that’s never going to change.”

At the end of Cowgate, there used to stand a graveyard, which was removed when the Queensgate Shopping Centre was built.

Eerily, it was one of the last places in the UK to be raided by grisly body snatchers who dug up freshly buried corpses and sold them to doctors for medical practice.

One evening in 1828 a cart was seen outside the cemetery with two men loading suspicious sacks onto it.

The alarm was raised and the men fled, with a cart chase ending near Norman Cross on the edge of the city. Here the men abandoned their getaway cart and fled over the fields.

But do their victims still wander Cowgate, eternally trapped and angry at their sad fate?

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Here is a video cam capture of security footage in which the poster claims the capture of what appears to be a shadow form of a human being.
Unfortunately, it`s a UFO/Bigfoot quality capture, and of course there is scant little information on the location or nature of the event.
But as always, you decide for yourself.

Film Distributor Guerilla Films is pioneering a unique way of releasing the latest version of Charles Dickens A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Directed by Jason Figgis the film will be released worldwide online on 1st January at 12.01am making it the very first new work based on a work of Charles Dickens to come out in his bicentenary year. Described as:

'A STARTLING WORK OF THE IMAGINATION THAT HAS ENORMOUS RELEVANCE FOR OUR TIMES'' Stephanie Sinclaire - Author 'The Shores of Grace'

''A TIMELESS STORY ABOUT THE TRUE MEANING OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT WITH BRILLIANT PHOTOGRAPHY AND FINE ACTING'' The Arts and Entertainment Magazine

Kate Middleton may have spent her first Christmas with the Royal's but it seems she was in the company of some not so friendly ghosts as well! Has Prince William told his wife about the spirits lurking in Sandringham Estate?

Apparently, the massive estate in Norfolk, England, is haunted by the ghosts of dead relatives and servants. They're not the friendly type of ghost either. No Casper and his friendly demeanour here!

"Everyone believes there are ghosts because so many have experienced them, including Prince Charles," said a source.

In fact, Kate Middleton shouldn't walk around the house alone because she might encounter one of these ghosts and they won't be kind to the newest member of the family!

"There are old parts of the house where nobody wants to go or be alone, and Kate would have been told all about them. If she goes wandering around the house alone she could be in for a nasty surprise," according to Now Magazine.

Apparently, the famous `Brown Lady` ghost of Raynham Hall, Norfolk also haunts Sandringham House. At Sandringham she appears as her young, happy self, whereas in Raynham she appears as the eerie, aged brown lady

According to legend, the Brown Lady of Raynham is the ghost of Lady Townshend who was married to Charles Townshend, a man known for his fiery temper. When Charles learned of his wife’s infidelity, he punished her by imprisoning her in the family estate at Raynham Hall.
He never allowed her to leave its premises, not even to see her children. She remained there until her death, when she was an old woman.

Below is a video post of a picture on Youtube where the poster claims to have captured a ghost outside on the Sandringham Estate. To me, it looks like somebody getting ready to sunbathe, but that`s my impression, you may view this differently.

On June 23rd 2011 I carried a piece surrounding paranormal events connected to the Titanic Exhibition.

Here are some of those reports:

`In the dim hours after the Titanic artifacts exhibit had closed for the day at the Putnam Museum, the aroma of cigar smoke was smelled. It was unmistakable, drifting near a sealed glass case that contained an ill-fated passenger’s cigar holder.

The holder had been retrieved from the wreckage of the ocean liner.
“It was strong, the strangest thing I ever experienced,” says Ciara Tanaka, volunteer coordinator at the Putnam.
Others on the staff of the Davenport museum had smelled cigar smoke in those moments. It was spooky because smoking is not allowed anywhere in the Putnam, certainly not under the strict rules governing the exhibit of Titanic artifacts.
That essence of cigar smoke adds mystery to cigar smoke odor that has gone unexplained during at least one other exhibit of Titanic artifacts.
“I have known of paranormal happenings at other Titanic displays,” says Lowell Lytle of St. Petersburg, Fla., who has portrayed Edward Smith, captain of the doomed ocean liner, at Titanic exhibit openings around the country, including Davenport. “Life itself is a mystery,” he says.
In Orlando, Fla., where there is a large permanent Titanic display, cigar smoke has been smelled — among other apparitions. The ghost of a little girl who died in the sinking on April 15, 1912, is said to roam the Orlando exhibit and tug at coattails. A passenger who died in the disaster tipped his fedora to a cleaning worker before disappearing .`

Click here for full link to article: GHOSTLY HAUNTINGS AROUND TITANIC EXHIBITS.It will be interesting to find out whether the new owner who is expected to part with 125 million dollars for the collection will report further `antics`.

The largest collection of artefacts salvaged from the Titanic is to be put up for auction next year, the 100th anniversary of the world's most famous shipwreck.
More than 5,500 items, including fine china, ship fittings and portions of hull that were recovered from the ocean liner, have an estimated value of £122 million and will be sold as a single lot.
The Titanic treasures were amassed during seven trips to the wreck, which rests about two-and-a-half miles below the ocean surface in the North Atlantic.
The auction is scheduled for April 1 by Guernsey's, a New York City auction house, but the results of the auction will not be announced until April 15, the date the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg a century ago.
The auction is subject to approval by a federal judge in Virginia whose jurisdiction has given oversight to legal issues governing the salvage of the Titanic for years.
Titanic's sinking claimed the lives of more than 1,500 of the 2,228 passengers and crew. An international team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard located the wreckage in 1985, about 400 miles off Newfoundland, Canada.
US district judge Rebecca Beach Smith, who has overseen the case from her Norfolk courtroom in Virginia, has ruled that official salvage company RMS Titanic has title to the artefacts and is entitled to full compensation for them.
Judge Smith, a maritime jurist who has called the Titanic an "international treasure", has approved covenants and conditions that the company previously worked out with the federal US government, including a prohibition against selling the collection piecemeal.
The conditions also require RMS to make the artefacts available "to present and future generations for public display and exhibition, historical review, scientific and scholarly research, and educational purposes".
Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, parent company of RMS Titanic, has been displaying the Titanic artefacts in exhibitions around the world. The items include personal belongings of passengers, such as perfume from a manufacturer who was travelling to New York to sell his samples.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

This video was originally in my `rejects` box of video owing to a few critical events that occurred .when filming.
Firstly the radio mic pulled itself out of the audio `input socket` on my camcorder.
As a result, a great chunk of audio was missing from the video.
In addition, 2 back up cams refused to work after a few minutes ....
I can either say it was an unhappy coincidence or there were other factors at play here.
As the location was some distance to where I live, I thought I would at least try and salvage part of the presentation for you to watch and hopefully enjoy before our next major investigation on January 5th, 2012 in Norwich, Norfolk.
This film was shot originally in 2010.

As many of you know by now, I am essentially a film maker, and most recordings shot during the day often have some input either by humans, animals, or road traffic.

This often leads to all types of problems, and quite apart from getting tongue tied and forgetting names or places - and the odd historical reference gone wrong!:)

I generally have the patience of a saint, but after take 20 you start to get a little agitated ......
But having said all of that, it`s generally not that bad but the heavy traffic at this shoot`s main location was very difficult to deal with - particularly those that want to park up next to you with the engine running so that they can have a chat with a friend or neighbour!

Here are a collection of such out-takes from my presentation, `The Last Witch Trial`, which is also shared below. I have to say, I thought this was very funny, hence my choice to share with you.

I`ve recently covered `Freedom of Information Act` requests to various British police forces, and their responses to the question of how many `paranormal` calls over the last 5 years that they have responded to.On this request, the Avon and Somerset Police actually supply the initial reports to received calls.

Chris Halton - Cop

These calls remind me of some of the strange calls I had to attend to.

Once, a lady rang the police to say that a yellow big cat had appeared in the garden.Having attended with a colleague we discovered much to our own relief that the `big cat` was in fact, an abandoned gold coloured sofa or couch in her front garden.

The lady here was a known alcoholic who often used to call the police frequently with either strange reports or odd requests.

Another call I went to was a lady who reported a burglary. Having attended, I could not find a point of entry, and after a few minutes she said, "Well it`s obvious, the burglar was a spirit who climbed in through the front door keyhole"..

As I found out soon afterwards, the lady had a form of senile dementia, even though she was in her 50`s.So in respect to many `paranormal` calls, the police wisely use discretion in dealing with these incidents.

`GHOST is chasing me, there’s an alien over the road, I’ve just seen a cat the size of a donkey, and a poltergeist has deleted files from my laptop.

These are just some of the bizarre calls logged with 999 operators from Avon and Somerset Constabulary over the past few years.

Details released through the Freedom of Information Act reveal a catalogue of weird and wacky calls made by members of the public.

The catalogue of craziness chronicles multiple UFO sightings and big cat concerns, often sparked by domestic pets or lights in the sky. Between 2005 and 2011, police fielded 81 emergency calls related to aliens, ghosts and wild animals. Aliens – including UFOs, lights in the sky and little green men – prompted the most calls, with 32 such reports.

One caller claimed to have been abducted by aliens, one reported ‘aliens across the road’, and another said they had seen an alien ‘trying to breathe everyone in’.
Lights in the sky were said to have slowly circled one caller’s town, while another person said they had seen 23 UFOs fly in formation down the Bristol Channel.

Big cats were another common cause, accounting for 31 calls. The creatures are described by various callers as pumas, panthers, leopards, and even a lion.
One caller told startled 999 operators they had seen ‘a large black cat the size of a donkey pass the house’, while others reported seeing a leopard sunbathing on top of a bridge and a panther killing deer.
And ghosts and mischievous spirits were spotted by plenty of 999 callers too.

One person said a ghost was ‘chasing’ them, another casually claimed to have seen a ghost ‘the other day’, and one said a poltergeist had ‘moved things around and deleted files from the laptop’.
Ghosts are most commonly found in the home, it seems, with one inhabiting the caller’s attic, and another person saying there was ‘a ghost in the living room this morning’.

Sunday, 25 December 2011

The scratch of paws in an empty room, the brush of fur against the legs days after the death of a pet cat, the thundering hooves of a horse seen galloping along a deserted road which vanished before the eyes of astounded motorists.

Such ghostly experiences are evidence – some believe – it is not only humans whose spirits roam the earth long after they have died.

Last week, paranormal investigators claimed Scampton, the airfield in Lincolnshire from where the Dambusters squadron attacked the Möhne and Eder dams in 1943, causing flooding of the Ruhr valley, is haunted by a chocolate-brown Labrador.

Guy Gibson`s Dog?

The dog is said to be the ghost of Nigger, who belonged to the leader of the Dambusters squadron, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, but was run over and killed just hours before the raid.

A dog has been heard growling in Gibson’s former office and a brown Labrador showed up in a photo taken of some schoolchildren at the memorial to the Dambusters in 1987, near Gibson’s office. No one could account for its presence.

Chris Bishop, a pet bereavement counsellor, says hundreds of people have reported seeing or feeling the presence of a much-mourned pet.

“I believe it is a spiritual presence but even if you just think it’s just a very vivid dream, it’s very comforting,” she says.

Not all ghostly creatures are so benevolent, however. Tales abound of malevolent creatures whose restless spirits often haunt the places where they were ill-treated in life or met an untimely death.

One such disturbing apparition is said to be that of a maimed and mutilated black cat who appeared to the unfortunate inhabitants of Manor Hall in Oxenby, near Bristol. This cat was thought to have belonged to a boy who lived there more than 500 years ago.

The boy’s parents died and he was taken into the care of a cruel guardian who tormented and abused him. Once the boy was made to watch as his pet cat was tortured, mutilated and finally boiled. The boy was eventually killed too and the wicked guardian was hanged for his murder.

Their spirits haunted the place for half a millennium, including the ghastly apparition of the maimed and bleeding cat.

A subsequent owner of the house erected a monument to the abused child, and carved the figure of a cat on the house. But it was not until the house was knocked down that the hauntings ceased.

Martyn`s Ape?

Athelhampton Hall in Dorset is said to be home to one of the more exotic animal ghosts in Britain: that of a pet monkey.

Some centuries ago a family named Martyn lived there and their daughter fell in love with the son of an aristocrat, who brought her a pet monkey from a trip abroad.

But the love affair turned sour and, heartbroken, the girl shut herself away in a secret staircase behind the long gallery, unaware that the monkey had followed her.

When the door was finally opened, the bodies of the girl and the monkey were found. People have reported the sound of scrabbling from the staircase and several have claimed to have seen the ghost of “Martyn’s ape”.

Along with many human ghosts, the spectre of a bear is said to haunt the Tower of London, once home to a menagerie. In 1816, a sentry was horrified to find a bear coming out of the jewel room. He lunged at it with his bayonet but the weapon went straight through it and the bear vanished. The sentry collapsed in shock and died a few days later.

More common spectral creatures are horses. Many civil war battlegrounds are thought to be haunted by the ghosts of horses slain there. A white horse said to be the charger of the Royalist commander Prince Rupert has been seen at the site of the Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire.

At Pendennis Castle in Cornwall the Royalists were besieged for five months by the Parliamentarian forces. They were forced to slaughter their horses for food. The castle’s custodian is regularly kept awake at night by the sounds of hooves but on investigation no horses are found.

One of the saddest stories is that of the hooves heard in the village of Westonzoyland in Somerset. The legend goes that a young man fighting for the rebel Duke of Monmouth was captured by government soldiers outside the village in 1685. The soldiers promised to spare the young man’s life if he could outrun a horse.

With his sweetheart watching, he ran for his life and won the race, but the soldiers shot him anyway.

The heartbroken girl drowned herself, and her ghost still returns to haunt the scene of the race, along with that of the runner, whose desperate panting can sometimes be heard, accompanied by the thundering of ghostly hooves.

Another tragic tale is that of George Nelson, a boy who was killed in 1885 on a road in Lincolnshire, when he was thrown from his horse. In recent decades, several motorists have seen a horse throw its rider on to the road, or braked as it has galloped into their path, but when they stop, neither horse nor rider is to be found.

Driving on dark nights on lonely roads, motorists seem to be particularly vulnerable to ghostly sightings, such as the phantom horses that gallop across a road in Berkshire near Steventon, startling motorists – only to disappear into the darkness.

Black Dog

Sometimes these lonely road sightings take the form of spectral hounds. Black dogs are said to haunt crossroads, where gibbets were commonly sited.

At Tring in Hertfordshire, a large black shaggy dog with flaming eyes has been seen at a crossroads where a chimney sweep was hanged in 1751 for the murder of a woman believed to be a witch.

And in 2001, a woman driving in Yorkshire saw a large black dog run in front of her car. She braked hard, but the hound passed through the bonnet. Her companion also saw it.

When the women reached Leeming Bar, they told a man they met about the dog. He later killed himself. Black dogs were once believed to presage death or disaster. Could the dog have signified his fate, or was it coincidence?

Certainly the spectre of a black hound has long had the power to terrify. On Dartmoor, a huge black dog with red eyes is believed to run beside a coach made of bones, pulled by spectral horses and driven by the ghost of Lady Mary Howard, a notorious woman who survived four husbands in the 17th century.

This and other black dogs may have inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous ghost story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Other animals, like human ghosts, are believed to be more benevolent spirits which simply wish to remain in the place where they lived. Sian Evans, who wrote Ghosts: Mysterious tales from the National Trust, visited Ham House in Richmond where the ghost of a spaniel is frequently seen.

“I was filming in one of the rooms in 2007,” she remembers, “when I saw a spaniel through the doorway of the next room, but when I went in there, there was no dog and it was a dead end.”

The dog was the favourite pet of a woman who lived in the house in the 18th century. He is featured in a portrait, gazing adoringly at his mistress. In the 1990s, workmen found the bones of a spaniel in a casket. The skeleton was reconstructed and placed in a case beneath the portrait.

“I think he had a very happy life there and that’s perhaps why he remains,” says Evans.
Source: IOL NEWS SA

Saturday, 24 December 2011

One of the main areas of my own research is into the possibility that animals can see spirit - whether sight unseen to humans, or as a full blown apparition.

My interest in animals and spirits actually goes back quite sometime from an event in my own home and my then two cats.

One lunch-time, I came home from work at 12 mid-day. My then girlfriend was preparing a cup of tea while I went into the dining room where I saw sat in the corner of the room my late Grand-mother, who appeared sat in her favourite chair and remained frozen and staring out into the room.

Her form was not as in life, but made up of an ectoplasmic image, which glowed a dull grey and green.
I called to my girlfriend who joined me in that room. She could see nothing.

Thinking that I was imagining this, I was then reassured that my sanity was preserved when my two cats walked in and immediately saw her. They stared intently at the ghostly figure and continued on by her.

Shelly and Jamie - ghost spotting cats

The figure of my late Nan remained a good 15 minutes before dissolving into a misty haze.

What was interesting then to me was that
a) My Nan who never knew of me living at this address had found me, and
b) My cats could share in this visitation from spirit.

Over the next few years, my cat`s frequently reacted to certain areas of the house and yet not to others, and one day some years later, this came to a head when my Tom cat Jamie refused to leave my bedroom and stared intently at a corner of the room.

He became quite agitated and started swearing and hissing repeatedly at this unseen intruder,
and then almost suddenly the room restored to normal and the cat went away.

Two nights later, I was sat in my bedroom narrating a new video when Jamie again reacted more violently to the corner again which naturally drew my immediate attention.
The room by now got colder and colder, and this presence seemed to grow as the room temperature was heading fast down the scale to freezing.

I went to the corner, and Jamie still refused to give ground whilst I cleared this presence from my home.
Almost instantly the room returned to normal, and the tension disappeared as Jamie left the room, no doubt satisfied with the result.

The interesting thing was that when I reviewed the audio from my narrative I found right at the end of the narration this voice STAND-UP EVP
It`s sounds like `Stand Up` with a cold and creepy arrogance.

That wasn`t the last time of my own experiences of cat meets ghost, only on this occasion I was able to share in what both my two cats were looking at!

On one fairly recent day, I went to the landing where I saw both my cats sat unusually together, and they were looking directly at a tortoiseshell cat who was staring as intently at them both.

All three were universally startled by my appearance, with my two running down stairs, whilst the tortoiseshell ran into, and passed through a solid door leading into my bedroom.
That was amazing, but in my life not unexpected at times.

Now one of my two cats is in spirit, Jamie though is still here, and still spotting presences.
Cat`s and dog`s and no doubt many other species of animal are very open to spirit.
Animals have an unquestioning openess that sadly many of us have failed to utilise.

But to the question of whether or not animals can see spirit - the answer is a resounding, `yes`, and much more, which I hope to cover here in the near future.

Here are two videos showing both cat and dog reacting as they often do to something not generally seen by humans.

Wednesday, 21 December 2011

WESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Normally, Rebecca Jordan will take all the free TV exposure she can get for the psychiatric hospital that she's turned into a tourist attraction known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

But she drew the line when producers for A&E's "Paranormal State" called. They didn't want to meet the ghosts behind the 2½-foot thick walls, she says. They wanted to get rid of them.

"And I was like, 'Well, maybe you're not the right fit for me. We do not want to get rid of our spirits! We want them to stay in the building!'

"Unless they want to go home," she adds with a laugh. "And then they can go home. I'm not trying to keep anybody here who doesn't want to be here."

Spirits, after all, make money. And the property that Jordan's father bought three years ago for $1.5 million is now generating enough revenue from overnight public ghost hunts at $100 a person and other types of tours to pay a staff of 33 and fund a never-ending list of maintenance and repair projects.

The main Gothic Revival building is one of the world's largest hand-cut sandstone structures and a National Historic Landmark. Virginia legislators authorized its construction in 1858, but it wasn't until 1864 that the first patients were admitted.

The hospital repeatedly changed hands during the Civil War, ending up with West Virginia when it became a separate state. Originally intended for 250 patients, it housed nearly 10 times that many during the 1950s.

Known in later years as Weston Hospital, it eventually closed in 1994, when the state moved patients to a more modern facility. Then it stood empty for nearly 15 years, inhabited only by rats, security guards and the occasional paintball-playing trespasser.

In 2008, Jordan's father Joe, a Morgantown asbestos abatement and demolition contractor, bought it at auction for $1.5 million. He's since sunk at least another $1 million into the place, hiring crew after crew to repair the showpiece clock tower, the disintegrating floors and the forever-leaking roofs.

Running the asylum is a family affair.

Rebecca handles marketing and sales. Her historian husband applies for grants. Her brother handles advertising and maintains the website. Her 13-year-old daughter, Breonna Childress, is a full-time volunteer who hosts overnight birthday-party ghost hunts with her friends and talks about the day she'll inherit the business.

Mainly by capitalizing on public interest in the paranormal, the Jordans have lured more than 115,000 visitors to the property since they bought it.

Chris Richards, director of the Lewis County Convention and Visitors Bureau, calls the following "phenomenal," noting that people are traveling from all over the world to visit Weston.

The Jordans and local hotels co-sponsor each other, and the operators of gas stations, convenience stores and restaurants all tell Richards that business is up.

"We're all tickled to death that someone is in there and using the space and bringing its back to its heyday and letting it be all it can be," she says. "If you love architecture and you love history and you love the paranormal, you're going to love that building, and that's just all there is to it."

Not that there aren't critics. Some mental health advocates were outraged by the name change, and still are.

"I still think it is inappropriate to capitalize on the sad history of that place and to promote the stereotypes that are attached often to mental illness," says Ann McDaniel, executive director of the Statewide Independent Living Council. "There's enough fear out there about people who have mental illness. We don't have to make it scary.

"It sensationalizes," McDaniel says. "If they were just educating people, that would be good. But when you have haunted houses ... when you have trails called the 'Psycho Path,' that kind of thing is negative."

About once every six months, Rebecca Jordan gets a call from someone concerned about the name.

"And then they book!" she says. "So who cares?"

The Jordan family has experience with mental health issues, she says, and its exhibits educate people on treatments once considered state of the art and now considered horrifying — electroshock therapy, lobotomies, cold-water baths and cage-like cribs that were hung from the ceiling, to name just a few.

The seven museum rooms also feature more than 120 pieces of artwork — pottery, paintings, quilts — that patients made in therapy. Disassembled for the winter, when the building is cold and damp, the displays include the superintendent's books, nurses' logs and more.

The asylum is working with West Virginia University to create an interactive exhibit featuring story boards, photos and recorded interviews with former patients and staff. And the museum is a popular stop with not only junior high and high school history classes, but also nursing and abnormal psychology students.

"Primarily, there were people here who were trying to make it better for the mentally ill," Jordan says. "But there were still people who believed in what they called 'thump therapy' ... and that's just the people who came in angry and would just beat the patients. Unfortunately, that did happen."

The key to the Jordans' success so far has been a diversity of offerings, from Civil War and hospital history tours, to "mud bogs" for four-wheelers and trucks, and a 25-band Moonstruck Music Festival. It hosts year-round paranormal tours and ghost hunts, even inviting TV celebrities to give seminars and lead special private hunts.

Jordan says the asylum is making about $600,000 or $700,000 a year now, but she still doesn't take a salary, and every dollar goes back into the business.

"And I'm fine with that," she says. "As long as we're able to keep the building open."

At the end of October, her payroll totaled about $161,000. But maintenance expenses were more than $295,000 — and that was before the wintertime shutdown and the ramping-up of repairs.

And so she adds attractions, with an eye to running a year-round business in 2012.

In the spring, she'll open three new museum rooms, plus a Macabre Museum "with all the oddities, all the strange stories" in the basement. Jordan's also working with bus companies on a "Kooky Christmas" and dinner-theater tour that will keep people coming through next winter.

But she faces on expensive hurdle: The unheated building is frigid, colder inside on a rainy December day than it is outside.

Many videos shared on Youtube and similar, often claim to show a `real ghost caught on cam`.
Sadly the result is often a semi transparent video clip of a friend overlaid across a suitable spooky background to create the effect, which is sometimes believed by unsuspecting viewers to be real and genuine.
To most seasoned or serious investigators like Haunted Earth, we are more often or not likely to capture a partial manifestation that shows a wispy outline of a figure.
This clip depicts such a capture, (although the music is annoying and unnecessary).
The poster has lifted this video from a TV program.

You often hear some scientifically leaning investigators claiming on video or on their websites or blogs that it has been proven scientifically, that Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF`s) can cause hallucinations and by default explain many paranormal events experienced by people on an investigation.

Further support is added by the opinions of TV `paranormal` shows, that this is the truth.
And you`ll sometimes hear them `dissing` an event as the effect of EMF`s.

It’s a common theory in the paranormal field that high EMF can cause hypersensitivity.
Many sceptics often use `science` as a means to add weight to their arguments, and of course to portray believers as naive or ignorant people. But in truth, the naive one`s are often the deniers, and in this article I set out to prove why.

What Are EMF`s?

In all examples of EMF, the energy field causes a change in everything it encounters.
EMF (or Electro Magnetic Field) is a broad term which includes electric fields generated by charged particles, magnetic fields generated by charged particles in motion, and radiated fields such as TV, radio, and microwaves.

Electric fields are measured in units of volts per meter or V/m. Magnetic fields are measured in milli-Gauss or mG. The field is always strongest near the source and diminishes as you move away from the source.

These energies have the ability to influence particles at great distances. For example, the radiation from a radio tower influences the atoms within a distant radio antenna, allowing it to pick up the signal.

They are present everywhere electricity flows, the health effects of exposure to them are still being debated. There is concern that electromagnetic fields around high-voltage sources such as power transmission lines may be linked to cancer.

What Scientific Evidence Is There That Supports EMF`s Can Cause Hallucinations?

During the 1980s Michael Persinger stimulated people's temporal lobes artificially with a weak magnetic field to see if he could induce a religious state.

Michael Persinger

He claimed that the field could produce the sensation of "an ethereal presence in the room". This research has received wide coverage in the media, with high profile visitors to Persinger's lab Susan Blackmore and Richard Dawkins reporting positive and negative results respectively.

Dawkins reported a range of minor effects (relaxation, sensations in his limbs, etc.), while Blackmore reported "One of the most extraordinary experiences" she had ever had.

The only published attempt, by a research group in Sweden, to replicate these effects failed to do so and concluded that subjects' reports correlated with their personality characteristics and suggestibility.

They also criticised Persinger for insufficient double-blinding. Persinger responded that the Swedish group had an incorrect computer set-up, a claim that the Swedish group dispute and that many of his previous experiments were indeed carried out double-blind, although the Swedish group have also disputed this.

As far as hallucinations go, the scientific community cannot agree on the precise effects of EMF exposure and what levels of exposure might be unsafe. Almost every health organisation has set certain limits on EMF exposure. Power companies are subject to these limits.

Summary

The biggest myth in ghost hunting/paranormal study groups is the contention that the presence of EMF`s correlates to paranormal activity. There is absolutely no scientific proof that this is so.
In broader terms it is a false assumption based upon others who claim EMF`s are a precursor to many paranormal events.

Yes, we`ve all seen the EMF on camera spark activity on it`s scale which many allude to a psychic presence. But more commonly (and I have proof of this) the EMF has failed to register when something quite profound is being recorded to camera or recorded as audio EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena).

And this has happened more commonly than most investigators are prepared to admit.
Because an EMF meter appears to react to a spiritual presence doesn`t indicate that EMF`s are being used by the presence to do this.

There are a variety of possible reasons why this might be so.

The most obvious is that the operator is falsely making the lights flash, the device is defective, the device is actually picking up explainable EMF`s, or a presence is merely using the device to communicate by making the scale lights flash, and as such has no relevance to the actual devices purpose.

Accepting for a brief moment that EMF`s are an indication of paranormality, and that EMF`s can therefore cause hallucinations. You have to know that to be induced into hallucinatory experiences, you require a substantial amount of EMF exposure to be directly affected by it.

An example would be exposure to an overhead power-line over a considerable period of time.
Of course, this applies to prolonged exposure to any extremely high-level electromagnetic fields.
The possibility of that in any paranormal investigation is virtually zero.

So the argument that EMF`s can cause hallucinations on paranormal investigations is false, and like many theories, a `junk science` - as with EMF meters for paranormal investigation.

As I have always believed and have shown, the best tool to the detection of paranormal events is you. Just try to believe in yourself more than to the opinions of others who trade misinformation as a scientific basis to reject the paranormal or even to marginalise your experience.

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Creaking floorboards, icy drafts, loud banging noises, the bloodcurdling screams of fellow guests…these are normally the sort of things we’d be straight on the phone to hotel reception to complain about but now they’re suddenly selling points, a must for any ghostly getaway.

So if you fancy experiencing a night at a haunted castle - complete with torture chamber and dungeon - or sharing your suite with the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, here is a compendium of haunted hotels from around the world for that extra special holiday break.

The Stanley Hotel, Rocky Mountain National Park, U.S.

A prolonged stay in a deserted old hotel deep in the Rocky Mountain National Park would make anyone’s imagination run wild and Stephen King’s visit to this now famous Colorado hotel provided him with plenty of material for his horror tome The Shining.

The Stanley Hotel shows the uncut R-rated version of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of the book on continuous loop on one of the channels on the guest room televisions and the hotel celebrates its literary horror heritage with regular ghost tours of the hotel and its underground tunnels.

Fans of the book should request room 217, the room King and his wife stayed in, which is said to be haunted by the ghost of a hotel maid as well as a small boy calling for his nanny.

The fourth floor though is ‘ghoul central’ with countless examples of unexplained activity, including lights turning on and off by themselves, noises emanating from unused elevators and ghostly children playing in the corridors.

The hotel’s previous owner Freelan Oscar Stanley is said to haunt room 407 with guests having reported seeing a face at the window of the now unoccupied room. Stanley’s wife Flora is also said to haunt the music room downstairs where she can often be heard tinkling the ivories.

This castle regularly tops the list of most haunted castles in Britain and spooky residents include the 'Blue Boy' and a wandering 'Lady Mary'.

The property was the first line of defence against a Scottish invasion during Edward I’s reign and has a particularly bloody history. Many traitors where hung, drawn and quartered and their heads displayed on the city gates as a warning to others.

The dungeon is a particular hotspot for otherworldly activity. Prisoners were thrown down a 20ft hole there and left to die and it has been reported that if you look down through the grate covering the hole you can see the remains of a young girl looking back up at you.

The spirit of the castle torturer, John Sage, is said to haunt the torture chamber, where his toe-curling implements are on display, including a stretching rack, boiling pot and a barrel.

The bloodcurdling wails of Blue Boy, a child who is said to have been buried in the walls of the castle, can be heard at midnight while the ghost of Lady Mary Berkeley is said to roam the castle searching for her husband, who ran off with her sister.

Guests have reported hearing the rustle of her dress as she rushes past the turret stairs.

Many say that stepping into Florence is like stepping back in time, yet anyone looking to make their historical encounters more of a close encounter this October should look no further than the city's Hotel Burchianti.

The property, which was a centre of Italian culture in the 1930s when it played host to an array of Italian poets, singers and politicians - including the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, also has some guests of a more apparitional nature.

Visitors have reported seeing the ghost of a child skipping down the corridors, a women knitting in a chair, and a maid who still wakes up before dawn to continue with her cleaning duties in the early hours.

The most spine-chilling area though is the hotel’s Fresco Room where guests have reported the feeling of being watched and the sensation of icy breath. It is enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the most unflappable guest.

This grand old liner has taken its nickname the ‘Grey Ghost’ to heart. The luxury ship was bought by the city of Long Beach in 1967 and transformed into a permanently docked hotel where several guests have reported having their timbers well and truly shivered.

Ghostly sightings have been recorded across the ship, including the swimming pool, which is said to be haunted by the ghosts of two guests who drowned there.

A young woman in a white dress has been spotted in the Queen’s salon, a man in a 1930s suit spotted hanging out in the First Class Suites and so many disturbances have been reported in cabin B340 that it is no longer rented out.

Knocking and banging noises have also been heard from the engine room where a 17-year-old sailor was crushed to death trying to escape a fire and guests say they have heard screams coming from the kitchen where a cook was, well, cooked by a burning stove.

The ship is such a hive of paranormal activity it now has its own Paranormal Research Center as well as a ‘Ghosts & Legends show’ – a daily special effects display that dramatises paranormal activities including wet footprints that mysteriously appear by the pool as women in vintage bathing suits visit for dip.

This hotel boldly claims to be the most haunted hotel in America. Located on the site of a former hospital ward, employees have reported spotting the spirits of former patients roaming the corridors, including a little boy who switches cutlery from the dining room to the kitchen.

A ghostly apparition claimed in one of the hotel rooms

Room 218 is said to be the most haunted room, home supposedly to the ghost of a stone-cutter who fell to his death there. The toilet is said to flush on its own, lights flash on and off and guests are woken in the middle of the night by a ghostly hand pushing into their backs.

If all this sounds like fun, the hotel is offering a Paranormal Pair package, which includes two nights at the hotel, plus ghost tour tickets, and the chance to spend a night in the former hospital morgue.

Anyone heading to Australia this Halloween who wants to take in the spooky side of Sydney should check in at the Russell Hotel.

The hotel, which was formerly a sailors' hostel and is situated in The Rocks, Sydney's oldest district, is thought to contain a seafaring guest who seems somewhat reluctant to check out.

Stories which date back to colonial times suggest that Room 8 is still the residence of a spectral seaman who has been known to stand and stare at guests.

The ocean-faring apparition also has a tendency to patrol the hotel at night, with staff and guests reporting the sounds of creaking floorboards only to find no-one there when they have gone to investigate the noise.

The Russell Hotel, 143a George Street, The Rocks, Sydney. For more information visit: www.therussell.com.au or email: info@therussell.com.au.

Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, Canada

The Russell Hotel in Sydney isn’t alone in having a particular hold over previous residents.

A former employee at The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, in Banff, Canada was so taken by his job that he continues to help out at the hotel even in the afterlife.

The ghost of Sam Macaulay, a former bellhop who died shortly after he was forced to retire in 1978, has been seen on numerous occasions wandering the hallways of the ski resort hotel to give guests a helping hand.

Some visitors have even attested to being let into their rooms by a helpful white-haired man after losing their keys, while others claim the bellhop also offered to carry their luggage.

If you like your ghouls to have a bit more glamour head for the Hollywood Roosevelt where, if rumours are to be believed, you could be sharing your room with none other than Marilyn Monroe, or rather the spirit of the glamorous star.

Guests and staff have reported seeing a blonde woman staring back at them in the mirror located in Monroe’s namesake suite, where she lived for two years while her modelling career took off.

Meanwhile, From Here To Eternity star Montgomery Clift, who stayed at the hotel during the making of the classic movie, is said to pace the hallway outside his former room on the 9th floor, rehearsing his lines and playing his bugle.

There have also been reports of a mystery man dressed in black skulking around the hotel’s ballroom where the first Oscars ceremony was held in 1929.

Newlyweds planning a Caribbean holiday will probably want to avoid Jamaica’s Rose Hall, lest they fall foul of the Georgian Mansion’s most famous resident.

The great house, which was built in 1770 became the residence of one Annie Palmer, in 1820. The feisty wife of John Rose Palmer ruled with an iron fist and legend has it that the cunning mistress sent three of her husbands to the grave; poisoning her first, stabbing and pouring boiling oil into the ears of her second, and strangling the third.

People say that the former mistress has been seen wandering the halls of Rose House, possibly looking for her next victim...

The Guinness Book of Records recognises Pluckley as the ‘most haunted village in England’, with more ghost sightings than any other, including the wraith of Red Lady Derring, which wanders the churchyard along with a phantom white dog.

Elvey Farm, which opened as a B&B in the 1980s, appears to be at the centre of many of these sightings and its dairy is home to the ghost of farmer Edward Brett, who shot himself there in 1900.

The ghost of Robert Du Bois, a highwaymen who stabbed himself to death, is said to haunt the guest lounge and other creepy apparitions include a strange old man who looks like Stalin and hangs out in the barn.

The village is such a hub of paranormal activity that a special ‘Paranormal Pluckley’ weekend is being planned to coincide with Halloween that will offer ghost hunters a sightseeing tour with a difference.

An uninvited guest has thrown stones and coins at staff, and stacked up piles of tyres and moved them around in a garage building while it was locked up overnight.

The ghostly figure, which materialised from time to time dressed in the style of the 1940s, is said to have first made its presence felt in 2003 but vanished (so to speak) after Mr White took over the business three years ago.

Now, however, the odd goings on have started again, with pre-war coins turning up mysteriously on the garage floor in two strange incidents a month apart.

Mr White found the first of the old penny pieces, dated 1936 and bearing the image of George VI, when he arrived for work one day in February.

The second copper coin, dated 1938, was lying in almost the same spot when Mr White, 35, and one of his mechanics turned up at the depot in Doncaster last week.

Mr White said: 'I took all the strange stories with a big pinch of salt when I bought the place. But I wouldn't like to say it's not true any more. There's no logical explanation for the two old pennies turning up like they did. I wish there was.

'It's a little bit scary knowing that there's something happening while the place is locked up at night.'

Previous owner Nigel Lee once called in a clergyman to perform an exorcism.

Mr White added: 'Nigel told me all about the tyres being moved around when the place was locked up at night and customers witnessing small change and stones coming out of nowhere and flying here and there.

'It's all right being sceptical about these things, but I'm the owner of two very old pennies now, and I'd love to know where they came from.'

Monday, 19 December 2011

If you are looking for a scare at bedtime or a pint with a friendly ghost, there's plenty to choose from in Ireland.

Offaly's Haunted Triangle - Kinnitty, Leap and CharlevilleKinnitty Castle
In the Banquet Hall of this spectacular Gothic castle, the "Phantom Monk of Kinnitty" has been seen by staff and visitors, gliding along the room. He often stops to look out of a particular window that overlooks a courtyard. He even communicates with staff members and visitors from time to time.
There are also two haunted bedrooms - the Geraldine Room and Elizabeth rooms. In other areas of the building eerie presences are often felt.

Leap Castle
Leap is famous for its many ghosts and spirits, as well as a foul smelling elemental creature, half human and half beast, who roams the lower regions of the Castle.
There is also the ghost of a young girl thought to be the spirit of a daughter of a one-time owner of the Castle. Her father killed the boy she loved, so one night when he was sleeping his daughter killed him.
The following day as the girl was standing at the top of the castle an invisible hand pushed her and she fell to her death.
It is believed her father's ghostly hand pushed her, and every night her spirit roams the castle mourning her lost love.
Many visitors to Leap have heard eerie moaning and weeping at night, and lights are seen at the top of the Castle.

Charleville Castle
The castle was built in by Charles Bury, the 1st Earl of Charleville, between 1798 and 1812. It is said that Bury was a devil-worshipper whose ghost still walks among the dungeons, catacombs and tower.
The castle is haunted by the ghost of a young girl who fell down the stairs to her death in the early 1800s.
The girl still roams around the castle and can be heard moving furniture around, laughing and talking.

Ross Castle, Meath
This historic castle was built in 1533 by the lord of Devon, Richard Nugent, 12th Lord Delvin--also known as the "Black Baron".
The legend goes that in 1536, Sabina, the Baron's daughter, slipped away one day to meet a man named Orwin on a bridge at the edge of her father's property. The Baron was English and Orwin was the son of an Irish lord, so it was not considered a proper match. They eloped taking a boat out onto Lough Sheelin.
While out on the lake, the boat overturned. Orwin hit his head and died. Sabina was rescued but didn't awaken for three days. When she did she came across her Orwin's body laid out in the palace chapel. She died from the shock of it soon afterwards.
She and Orwin are buried nearby in a mound down the road near the quarry. It is said that her spirit returned to Ross, while Orwin's returned to his family's home. Her screams can be heard in the dead of night.

Kavanagh's ("The Grave Diggers"), Glasnevin, Dublin
This pub from 1833 is named after the former landlord John Kavanagh - who fathered 25 children.
It is commonly known as "The Gravediggers" due to its proximity to Prospect Cemetery and the frequently observed custom to order a pint by throwing a shovel of earth from the cemetery against the pub's wall.
The resident ghost is said to be an elderly man in old-fashioned tweeds, who sits at the bar enjoying a pint ... until he disappears without a trace.

The Castle Inn, Lord Edward Street, Dublin
The birthplace of James Clarence Mangan (1803) and one of Michael Collins's favourite watering holes. Mangan still frequents the place today.
A poet, his best known work is "Roisin Dubh", and he died of cholera in 1849 after a short, drug-fueled life.
Today the temperature is said to dip and the mood to darken whenever Mangan's ghost decides to drop into the Castle Inn.

Ballygally Castle Hotel, Larne, Co. Antrim
This castle from the 17th century is home to the ghost of Lady Isabella Shaw. She was imprisoned because she gave birth to a girl instead of a boy.
Broken-hearted Lady Isabella clutched her child and leapt to her death.
Isabella's knocking at doors is said to scare and frighten guests. Even more frightening though is the wailing of a child that can be heard on other occasions.

The Brazen Head, 20 Lower Bridge Street, Dublin
Reputed to be Dublin's oldest pub, although the current building is not the original one. It was formerly used by "Bold" Robert Emmet for meetings.
He was hanged in September 1803 but still visits the "Brazen Head" in spectral form. He usually takes his place in the corner and looks out for enemies.
Popular with tourists, even Emmet's executioner was a regular here.

Kyteler's Inn, Kieran Street, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny
Named after Dame Alice Kyteler, the 'Witch of Kilkenny' because it occupies the ground where her house once stood.
Accusations of wrongdoing and witchcraft followed her survival of several wealthy husbands. Alice and her son bought their freedom back, but her servant Petronella was burned at the stake.
It is said that she is the female ghost haunting the premises, though some folk insist that it is Alice herself.

Renvyle House Hotel, Renvyle, Co. Galway
Once owned by Oliver St. John Gogarty, it was burned down by the IRA and completely rebuilt. However, this did not get rid of several ghosts residing there.
Even W.B.Yeats witnessed the unexplained happenings - doors opening and closing, groans, bedsheets flying off and sleepers being thrown out of their beds.
Some female guests undressing have even spotted voyeuristic ghosts in the mirror!

Sunday, 18 December 2011

What sometimes amuses me is the notion by some sceptics that `scientific opinion` is firmly against the possibility that spiritual energy actually exists.

Emboldened by this `empirical truth`, those sceptics denounce any person that dares to share their work and beliefs to a wider audience of open minded sceptics or fellow believers.
Belief in the paranormal is the new heresy, and in their sometimes deluded, self assumed roles as `guardians of truth` they quote from unproven sources that the paranormal is always explainable, and assert that these can be proven to be a trick of the mind, or in the case of `orbs`, mere dusty specks, bugs, or water vapour that have appeared on camera as balls of light.

I have battled with these `sceptics` for years, and have so far defeated every argument based mostly around erroneous statements that `science has disproved them`. Or, `Major camera manufacturers have built cameras that preclude these `dust` images from appearing, as they (the manufacturers) agree that `orbs` are explainable anomalies or caused through faults within the lens of the camera`.

I have shown on video that `orbs` are not easily dismissed as dust either, especially when I have indicated their presence on camera and in darkness, or (worse still for the sceptics) predicted where the energy would appear, for which this was also confirmed again on camera.
Both proven statements have had the inevitable `knee jerk` response that I have somehow cheated, and that I am merely a `showman` and therefore my evidence must be ignored without explanation to show how I allegedly fabricated them. But I am not alone with my beliefs, which are based on real actual experiences of going out into the field to examine this phenomena.

So here is a previously published Daily Mail article on the work of some scientists that support the view that orbs are an indication of spirituality.

At first, it seemed no more than a curious coincidence. Professor Klaus Heinemann, a researcher for NASA, the U.S. space agency, was studying a collection of photographs his wife had taken at a gathering of spiritual healers when he noticed that many of them featured the same pale but clearly defined circle of light, like a miniature moon, hovering above some of the subjects.

Like most rational people, he assumed that the pictures were faulty. 'I presumed the circles were due to dust particles, flash anomalies, water particles and so on,' says Prof Heinemann.
But I was sufficiently intrigued that I returned to the room in which the pictures were taken, in the hope of finding an explanation - like a mirror in the background. None was forthcoming.'

Nor could he find any faults with his wife's camera. And as a scientist with considerable experience in sophisticated microscope techniques - examining matter down to atomic levels of optical resolution - his methods were nothing if not rigorous.

Still puzzled, Heinemann set out to discover what else might have caused the mysterious circles. He and his wife began taking hundreds of digital photographs at random events to see whether they could recreate the mysterious effect.

The answer was that they could make these shimmering 'orbs' appear again, but only - absurd as it may sound - if they 'asked' the apparitions to make themselves visible to the camera. And they found this method worked particularly well when the couple photographed spiritual gatherings

After-thought: An orb appeared on this photo taken by Klaus Heinemann

What on earth was going on? Again, a maverick technical glitch seemed the obvious answer. Such anomalies happen frequently in digital photography. If you accidentally jog a camera while a picture is being taken, especially in dim light, you can easily get a double image.

But again, Prof Heinemann ruled out a technical fault. 'We were quickly able to eliminate the common problems associated with photography - such as dust particles, water droplets, reflections and a host of other likely causes.'

Yet the orbs still kept appearing. And the more images he took, the more he was able to study the bizarre properties of these shimmering lights.

Heinemann set up dozens of experiments using two cameras on static tripods under controlled conditions. His early experiments found that orbs can move very fast, up to 500mph or more.

Heinemann also found that during his numerous dual camera experiments, when he used twin cameras to capture an object from two different angles, a single orb shape would often appear - but only in one of the two images taken simultaneously.

It was as if the orbs somehow chose which camera to appear on, or whether to appear at all.

Eventually, Heinemann was left with only one conclusion: that he was witnessing some form of paranormal intelligence.

'There is no doubt in my mind that the orbs may well be one of the most significant "outside of this reality" phenomena mankind has ever witnessed,' says Professor Heinemann.

'Until now, there has been a huge amount of anecdotal evidence that the spirit world exists. I believe it's no longer anecdotal. Thanks to digital technology, we can see it for the first time. We are dealing with a non-physical - albeit real - phenomenon.'

The temptation, of course, is to dismiss such claims as bunkum. Indeed, many of Professor Heinemann's colleagues consider his research to be 'utter flaky nonsense'.

And yet a growing number of respectable scientists refuse to write off the possibility that these orbs, which are starting to appear on cameras around the world, just might offer a fascinating glimpse into the unknown.

In 2007, the world's first conference on orbs took place in Sedona, Arizona, where several scientists controversially stated that they believed orbs were indeed a genuine paranormal phenomenon.

Their conclusions, if correct, could have huge implications on the way we view the universe and our part in it. The experts say that just because something has not yet been scientifically proven, it doesn't mean that it is not real.

Professor William Tiller, a theoretical physicist who spent 35 years researching consciousness and matter at Stanford University in California, reminded the conference that what we see with our physical eyes comprises less then 10 per cent of the known universe.

This is because human vision operates only within a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum. For instance, we cannot see radio waves, which carry huge amounts of information, yet we know they exist.

Similarly, Miceal Ledwith, a former professor of Theology, who for ten years was President of Maynooth College at the National University of Ireland, reminded the sceptics that when, in 1861, Dr Ignaz Semmelweis had claimed there might be some unseen link between surgeons who didn't wash their hands and the high rate of infection in childbirth, his mainstream colleagues ridiculed him.

Yet he had found the first evidence of what was later to become known as bacteria.

'Most great discoveries throughout history have been initially ridiculed,' Ledwith told the orbs conference. 'To my mind, there is no doubt that the orb phenomenon is real and deserves to be taken seriously. There are not just a few pictures of orbs, which could easily be faked, but hundreds of thousands from all over the world.'

To date, Ledwith, who was also a member of the International Theological Commission at the Vatican, has a collection of more than 100,000 orb pictures .

'They come in all sizes, ranging from a few inches to several feet across,' he says. 'Sometimes they appear alone, and at other times hundreds of them, in colours ranging from white to blue, green, rose and even gold.

'Over time, I realised that a flash seemed to be essential to capture them, even in daylight. I believe this is because we can see the orbs only through the process in physics known as fluorescence. The camera flash sparks this fluorescence process, making the orbs visible to the camera.'

Ledwith is still uncertain about what these orbs might actually be, but he has no doubt that they are some sort of paranormal apparition.

'I believe they could be many things. They may turn out to be the spirits of those who have passed on; or, as some spiritual teachers state, they might be spirits waiting to be born into a physical body,' says Ledwith.

'They may also be, or represent, a host of other intelligences - from nature spirits to beings of pure energy that have never been incarnated in a physical form. There are hundreds of different types of orb.'

Many of the scientists at the conference believe the orbs are plasma-like balls of energy - but an energy that can be detected by physical means, and which appears to have some control over its own shape and form.

It's certainly the case that they can often be photographed best at places of psychic significance. 'They definitely seem drawn to spiritualtype gatherings,' says Ledwith.

'We regularly see orbs near healers' hands or heads. Perhaps they assist in the spiritual healing process.'

Take the case of Anna Donaldson, a freelance photographer who was commissioned to take pictures of Keith Watson, a medium who had been drafted in to help solve the disappearance of Sarah Payne, the little girl who was snatched while playing near her grandparents' home in West Sussex seven years ago.

The shoot took place at the exact spot where Sarah was last seen, because the medium had suggested that he 'might pick something up'. Sure enough, when the pictures were developed, a mysterious glowing dot appeared in one of the crucial images.

'I didn't believe in any of this paranormal stuff,' says Anna, 'but I couldn't find any fault with the camera - if there had been, then all the images would have been tainted, not just one of them.'

Still sceptical, Anna had the film and images analysed for technical faults, but again no one could provide a logical answer - until a member of the Psychic Institute suggested that the pictures could indeed be evidence of 'auras'. In this case, Anna was told that the blueish colour of the orb suggested the presence of a very young soul.

Still intrigued, Anna arranged to photograph Watson again - at the exact spot from where another young child had disappeared, this time in Greece. To her astonishment, the photographs again showed the presence of a blue orb.

And when Anna repeated the shoot the next day, in a bid to rule out a trick of the light, she got the same result - only this time it was two orange orbs.

'So what I now had was pictures of orbs from three different cameras, in two different countries, on three different days - there's simply no way that could be a chance occurrence or a technical fault,' says Anna.

'I still don't know what to think about it, but I suppose because a camera can pick up an image at a shutter speed of 1/2,000 of a second, it's possible it can detect things the naked eye cannot see.'

Could it have been the spirits of the lost children?

Terri Caldwell, a healer from Belbroughton, in Worcestershire, is among those who are convinced that orbs are a visible manifestation of human spirits.

'To my mind, the orbs are the spirit world simply going about their business,' she says. 'I believe we are all spirits having a physical experience, and when we die our energy field which carries all the information about us continues on.'

But not everyone is convinced. Gary Schwartz, Professor of Psychiatry at Arizona University, has conducted many experiments into orbs with the help of optical scientist Katherine Creath and remains sceptical.

'We feel that a large majority of so-called orb pictures are too readily attributed to some form of paranormal phenomena when, in fact, stray reflections in uncontrolled environments often produce orb-like images,' he says.

That does not deter those, like Miceal Ledwith, who feel orbs are simply too widespread to be written off as a misunderstanding. 'The orbs are an everyday part of reality, as much as we are,' he maintains. 'Their world may be as real as ours, but exists on higher frequencies.

'If you change your TV channel, you switch to different frequencies, which contain different information. It's illogical to think that what we cannot see is not real, because the human eye is able to receive only a very narrow part of the light spectrum. Many animals can see in spectrums invisible to us.'

As Professor Heinemann summarised: 'Research into orbs is only in its infancy. But the photographs of these spirit emanations offer evidence - as close to scientific proof as we have ever come - in proving the existence of spiritual reality.'

Klaus Heinemann's and Miceal Ledwith's book, The Orb Project, was published by Simon & Schuster in November 2007.